


The Hanged Man

by ShunRenDan



Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: Drabble, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, ShuShi, renho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:20:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29637321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShunRenDan/pseuds/ShunRenDan
Summary: Ghosts run wild in the night.
Relationships: Amamiya Ren & Suzui Shiho, Amamiya Ren/Suzui Shiho, Kurusu Akira & Suzui Shiho, Kurusu Akira/Suzui Shiho, Persona 5 Protagonist & Suzui Shiho, Persona 5 Protagonist/Suzui Shiho
Kudos: 16





	The Hanged Man

**Author's Note:**

> When you keep your linens  
> Like virgin snow  
> Like a blanket of white  
> Unbroken by the soil below  
> The sound don't carry  
> Won't rise or fall  
> It damps the racket, chokes it back  
> A strangle hold

The night was long and full of terrors. Those terrors struck out at Ren Amamiya in the long hours, lingering in the shadows beyond his window sill and the sound of wind buffeting the alley outside. Some held taut on power lines, a murder of fearful crows watching him in his bed, their dark eyes peering through the glass and into his soul. They existed in the liminal moments between, only there while his eyes were closed, and yet — despite their absence when he peeked — he could see them so clearly in his mind and feel their gaze on him whenever he glanced away.

Intermingled with the black were gunshots: two, each one louder than the last and more sonorous. They echoed through him and rattled his bones in the dark, jolting him from an otherwise fitful sleep at least once a week. 

Other nights, he woke to faces forgotten and sharp, cacklish laughs. 

It felt as if he only ever found solace when his arms were wrapped around the waist of another, his face buried in the fields of her brown hair or his lips cresting the landing between neck and ear. There was something about Shiho Suzui’s skin that set him abuzz and washed away the static. She slept like a log, for one thing, and for another…

She placed so much faith in him that he couldn’t bear to let her down.

The first time they slept together in the same bed, he remembered how accidental it had been. How she’d been laughing one minute, watching some old television show on a set way too old to belong in the twenty-first century, and absolutely concussed the next. He didn’t remember the exact moment she fell asleep, either. He remembered only the sound of her breathing and the gentle pulse of that breath against the flat of his neck.

Even in the semidark of his room, it was so easy to see every inch of her in that moment. Her fingers were limp over his belly and her own, her face unguarded for the first time in months. He’d been so afraid to move, to disturb her, that he’d fallen asleep beside her.

The next morning, he awoke to an empty powerline and a bright window that broadcast to him the overcast sky outside. He made her breakfast, some light tea instead of coffee (such was her preference), and sent her on her way without saying much of it.

“I’m so sorry,” she’d apologized, a dozen times.

As if he’d ever accept an apology for something like that.

The next night, he was disappointed when she left early, keen to find the way home before she could fall asleep on him again.

So began their game.

After that, whenever she came over, Ren Amamiya made sure to set the board. He prepared just a cup or two of chamomile, a little bit of almond milk in case she grew thirsty beyond that — set the lights to a dim thrum that covered his room in a comfortable warmth. The blinds were half drawn, the television already going. Morgana, eager to do his part, was bundled up in the bed so that she might snuggle him there, and thus the trap was set.

It was all strangely manipulative, but…

He liked knowing that she could be so comfortable around him. That he could be so comfortable around her. The burden of her head against his chest and the smell of sweet vanilla in her hair only did more to seduce him into her comfort, and by the time he woke the knowledge that she might leave had transcended worry into a sort of hangover he couldn’t shake. Shiho Suzui was a very warm sort of girl, after all, and even when she stole the blanket he never lacked for anything in the middle of the night.

She stole the blanket practically every time.

That meant he would often wake up to the image of a beautiful blanket burrito wrapped up in his arms, ready to either grumble or pout about how early it was and how she had places to be. Ren Amamiya would inevitably let her go, but not after making such a dramatic show about how bereft he would be in her absence that she would kiss him goodbye.

And so every morning he walked her to the door, and leaned against the frame while she wandered down the street, sometimes still nursing a cup of coffee that she always promised to return the next night.

It was routine.

Her warmth against him at night kept the cold winds outside at bay in the winter and held the stars in the sky on those occasions where they felt they might shake free.

He remembered holding her one night in the late days of January, when the hours grew long and the blizzard outside kept her over a day longer than she intended to be. He remembered stepping out of bed — half in a stupor, drawn to the window.

One moment, he was there, shirtless, staring out into the white fields of a Tokyo unplowed. Densely packed snow glittered from street corner to street corner, broken by the occasional footpath and bike tread. In the back alley outside of the attic, there was only pile after pile, a foot and a half beyond what was expected.

It looked so much like bone.

He saw spectres in the snow. Faeries, dancing along precious stone and swaying as shadows beneath the honey-gold streetlamps.

They were banished by a hand on his shoulder.

Ren inhaled and glanced to the beautiful woman wiping her eyes to his left. Her hair fell around her shoulders in two, messy bushes, and she looked so much like a bird’s nest cast in marble that he couldn’t help but to laugh at the juxtaposition.

“Go back to bed,” he whispered.

Outside, the rush of wind over snow buffeted the windows. Shiho watched him for a long second, her eyes half-closed and her face wrought with something he recognized as full, unperturbed gremlin energy. Futaba gave him the same look whenever he denied her curry.

“Come with me, then.”

“Right now?”

“It’s three in the morning.”

“Half past two.”

“Three.”

“You don’t round that much.”

“Are you alright?”

Ren looked out into the white, where the phantoms from the nights  _ before _ were now gone. He saw only the cold streets of the city, daunting and endless beyond the borders of their shared alley. 

“Yeah.”

Shiho squeezed his shoulder, and, for a moment, he thought that might be it. She was not the type to profess undying love to satisfy ego, or the type to throw herself upon him like a ship upon the rocks.

And yet, like a bird nesting on a branch, her lips blessed the crown of his head.

And then she was gone, retreating toward the bed like a clumsy samurai waddling away from a duel. Ren snickered, wiped the laugh clean from his face, and stole the blanket back on his way into the bed.

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to my loving partner, who puts up with me much more than I deserve.


End file.
